SCRIPT:
WE begin with entering a square
A square,
That used to be a rectangle…..
You PUSH your BODY into it
Cutting through the liquid.
It is warm.
A warm square,
That now surrounds you
There are others inside who you don’t know.
You are not bothered.
YOU ARE ANNONYMOUS
Alone, but amongst others
Going Up and
Going Down the side of the square.
In a line, a lap
The others and yourself create ripples and movements
And you all have GLISTENING skin.
You feel WEIGHTLESS,
Timeless,
Limitless, Looking up at the ceiling,
Moving in a line.
BE WITHIN this translucent -- inorganic liquid
Here we float,
Inside of the square
The bodies around you are of different builds
And of varying skin tones
Covered bodies,
Revealed bodies,
Exposed bodies
Pot bellies
Squat bodies
E-elongated muscular bodies
Ripped bodies,
Large bodies,
Soft bodies
Bony bodies
Rotating around
Those with hidden cleavage
Those with nipples on show
Going up and back on themselves.
Belly buttons
Freckles and moles
Naked bodies,
Bodies wrapped in towels
Old bodies young bodies
Those with implants
And they see each other
They move at a different pace
Passing one another
Creating syncopated rhythms.
Figure hugging,
Loose,
Respectful
Modest
Religious
Some have excess gold chain mail
Watches, rings, bands,
People with inked bodies
Each of their spoken languages disappear into the liquid
There are drains
And the smell of chlorine
There is light falling in golden strands
The floor is visible through the liquid
Displaying a movable image
Try to think about
How much liquid IS IN THIS MASS?
What is its VOLUME?
Why is it always moving? The bodies flow pushing it around
Meditating pushing forwards
And GOING BACK on themselves?
Try to visualized many people are currently inside?
We are all wet
There is bad art on the walls of things relating to water
Of a whale,
Of a seahorse
And of a boy
Along with an out-of- place image of a spider in a frame
Spider in the mirror
Hayfeaver
[LAUNDRETTE] [SPEAK FAST]
The dog
The dog lead
The lead in a hand
The dog connected to the lead
The tiles they stand on
A sense of perspective
Graying hair- Frizzy hair- No hair
Flip flops on the tiles with toes that have a lot of hair
Cylinders
One broken wrist
Garden furniture inside
Tiles that resemble bricks
A piece of clothing hangs out of the machine
Warmth coming off the machine
Boredom
Something to do
I go nothing to do but I gotta do my
Daily ritual
A laminated “No smoking sign”
A kettle
Cups of half drunken tea with scum forming on the tops
Rings on the table
Puddles of particle-laden liquid left after it evaporates
Residue
A radio on the table with
LILYS, WHITE LILYS
That are being inspected by the women with the dog.
Lines and circles
Bodies and heads
Criss-cross pockets
Slots and numbers
Spider on a mirror, Hayfeaver
It is raining outside and the women with the dog is damp.
The dog is starting to understand how humans talk
And is trying to work out how they broke their wrist?
How?
Punched the wall in fury last Friday POW!
Through the layer of plasterboard
Cheap ass walls with little insulation
There is a sign on the wall that talks about Prozac and cleaning
Strange…..
In the room, next-door someone is masturbating
in the middle of the day
The person with the broken wrist is un-employed at the moment and the last time in
the job center were told that “they might be unemployable”.
They remember thinking about how
increasingly difficult they make it to claim benefits and
How the interior of job centers make you feel instantly depressed
I heard they called a pub, “The job center”
That is the most depressing idea
People with a job can go and drink processo at the Job Centre. Grosse.
But back to the women…and the dog
She is a widow with a PACEMAKER and……a dog
The guy that looks a bit shifty back-left
Standing at the dryer is a drag Queen Thursday-Sunday but for the rest of the week
hides in the anonymity of a regular guy
He gets shy
When he has to wash his wardrobe ignoring the
Hand wash only label of his sequined dress
The beat-up radio is playing a station called “Gold”. Each song is sandwiched with
an advert.
The person with the broken wrist is the only one that wears a watch, although they
of all the three in the room
have the most free time.
They feed the last remaining fish food to the goldfish.
There is lint and hair in the crevices of the tiles and
Dropped ocher-color- flakes of pollen on the table around the flowers that claimed
when brought
To last for 7 days along with the opening hours.
Certain visitors have the same usage patterns of the space
The same carcadial rhythms
There is a sudden sent of the perfumes which smells like old spice
Who’s driving the bus?
Who’s flying the areoplane?
What did they eat for breakfast?
What shoe size are they?
What emotional heartbreak have they suffered?
Have they experienced a loss?
Do they think about this death every day?
When did they last get pins and needles? Have a blood test?
Come next to another?
Watch the sun set?
Wash their glossy hair?
Get a blow job? Cook rice?
Have a nose bleed?Fulfill a dream?
You’ve all got no idea about me.
No idea
Crow’s feet around your eyes
[CLUB]
I need to see you ID
You enter to
Cheap aftershave mixed in with cigarette smoked clothes.
An audaciously camp bar tender
Tells you to
QUE UP
FIX UP
STAND UP
WAKE UP and WHAT DO YOU WANT TONIGHT?
Bodies under colored light?
You witness an angry keyboardist
And a drummer gluing it together
And a woman hitting her guitar with a drum stick
With an arch of pedals at her feet….
When and where are we all body?
When and where are we all body?
What are our daily rituals?
And where do they take place?
What quantifies one?
A ritual? I mean.
A repetition, a recurrence? A tick, A thread? A commitment? A language? A
Practice?
When and where are we all body?
Everyone had idiosyncrasies
Coping mechanisms to the world
What about practical desires?
And our needs?
In sex, in the supermarket, in the launderette? Blood is thicker than water, but we are
always searching for the nearest bar
What does it mean to wash our clothes next another’s?
To share physical space?
In a Hamman? In a pool or a pool hall?
When swimming?
Sweating next to another’s body?
Floating near others
Where we experience a communal wetness?
Is it perhaps a state of mind?
Or collective anger even?
Or in dormant languages that co-exist and can be stored inside of a body?
The exercising of a collective state of mind?
Maybe even in learning?
Absorbing in the same frame of time?
Or is it in belief?
In a mosque or a church?
A choir that sings together
A group that prays for the same thing
A collective imagined space
Maybe even at feyenoord stadium?
In between bodies.
And what about communal banality?
Like standing in the post office or sitting under a tree
When there are other people underneath other trees
Is it a matter of releasing chemicals?
Endorphins?
Dancing in a club,
When anomalistic tendencies seep out of our bodies
As they move to a beat?
Or the opposite perhaps?
A reoccurring collectively shared haunted
Mental or physical space?
Collective trauma even?
Are we connected yet alone?
Through experience and through our own individuality?
What does it mean to be solitary?
Can you think of some spaces where you consider yourselves to be “all body?”
And placer them from your imagination into this room
But honestly….
What does it mean to be alone?
Truly alone?
What constitutes aloneness?
Not speak to anyone for
A day
A week
A month
A year?
How is this affected with age?
And with a state of mental health?
Some people deliberately push others away..
Are we with another if we have a god?
A dog?
A companion?
Is a daily co-existence important?
We die alone
A mindless society pushes us to search for one mate
And brands us incomplete without
Polyamory is dis-encouraged and frowned upon
Questions around jealousy
Are we expected to become more alone over time?
People are edited
In and out of our lives
Our urban tribes
Sprawling agr-i- cultural realities
Expand and decrease
In numbers, positions,
And alignment to politics
Deserted villages
And Overpopulated epicentres.
Who would you say truly knows ou?
And what to you defines
A sing-u- lar EN-TITY
AND plu-ral- i-ty (plurality)
What to you can be defined as an exchange?
One thing that can be received by another?
A transference of energy from A to BE
Lightly we all talk to ourselves
But now I’m talking to YOU
I really want to collectively think about what it means to be alone?
And what it means
To be together?
Are WE a WE?
And within this We
Who are they?
Collectively we breed inclusion and exclusion
What does it mean to bare witness?
And be witnessed by another?
Our collective memory is taking shape
You can now leave the square.
(All words and sound, written and performed by artist, (me).)